Low Carb High Fat Diet Tips

For most people, a low carb diet is often accompanied by high protein consumption but it isn’t the only way to do it. Another popular option, when restricting carbs, is to also switch to a high fat diet.

That’s insane, right? When you start a diet, it’s usually to lose body fat.

But, there’s a metabolic change when you switch to high fat and eat little to no carbohydrates. It’s called ketosis, and it absolutely melts body fat when followed diligently.

Getting Into Ketosis

A low carb high fat diet, or ketogenic diet, has one very important goal to help you lose body fat. And if you don’t accomplish this goal, you’re very likely to gain weight or body fat.

Ketosis is a metabolic process when your body doesn’t have enough glucose to use for energy, which then forces your body to use body fat for energy.

Ketosis isn’t a quick switch, however, and it often takes several days of following a very low carb diet to begin the process of switching to body fat as your primary energy source.

Testing Your Ketones

If you’re going to follow a ketogenic diet, and eat large amounts of fat calories, it’s best to play it safe and make sure you’re doing it right. The process of burning body fat, due to low glucose, will release ketones which can then be tested with special ketone strips.

The strips are only a few dollars, and it’s a quick and painless process to test your ketone levels. They’re called ketone strips, or ketostix, and can be found in most local drug stores and online.

Low Carb High Fat Diet Food

There’s a carb threshold, and a fat calorie threshold that you’ll want to keep in mind when choosing your food. Typically, you’d like to eat less than 20 grams of net carbs for the entire day. This is carbs minus the fiber content in the food you’re eating.

So, if a piece of fruit has 10 grams of carbs and 2 grams of fiber you would count that as 8 grams of net carbs.

For fat, you’d like a very high percentage of your calories to come from good fat sources. Aim for 70-80% of your total daily calories from fat.